Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Lovers of 'antiques' rally fellow fossil fiends

Some couples bond over golf. Or food. Or bad TV. This pair shares a primordial passion and gets others digging.

By BILL COATS
Published March 11, 2005

Michael Searle was in the Rainbow River near Dunnellon. He wasn't swimming or tubing or canoeing; he was lustily eyeballing a pocket of mud.

Clearly, Searle's fellow fossil hunters had fancied this spot. The surrounding river bed was potholed from their digging. But they had shunned the deep, gelatinous mud. Searle plunged in. His gloved hands shoved gallons of mud into the passing current, which swept it away like a steady wind.

Then, treasure.

In a gravelly layer beneath the dirt, Searle spied a bear tooth, apparently from a species that has been extinct for 12,000 years.

Searle thrust the tooth toward the diving mask of his wife, Seina.

"You could see her just about fall out of her dive suit," he said.

Thus began the biggest among many treasure adventures for the Searles, a Lutz couple hooked on fossil hunting who work tirelessly to hook other people.

"They are just passionate about fossils," said Patrick McGirk, who had no idea Florida yielded fossils until the Searles hooked him. "They are passionate about it as a couple. They just love it."

The Searles are at the core of the Tampa Bay Fossil Club, one of the nation's largest, which struts its stuff this weekend in the huge FossilFest at the Florida State Fairgrounds.

FossilFest is a challenge for the volunteer members, particularly Michael Searle, the club president. Yet McGirk said Seina Searle already is organizing a big club expedition to Arcadia in late April, when the Peace River will be shallowest and its fossils will be most evident.

The Searles' story probably should begin about 28-million years ago, when the Florida peninsula last emerged from the ocean. Dinosaurs were extinct by then, which explains why none of their bones, the stars of the fossil world, are found here.

But Florida hosted its share of interesting creatures, as the Fossil Club proclaims on its Web site: "two-story-tall giant ground sloths, VW-sized armadillos, tiny three-toed horses, humpless camels, hornless rhinos, fierce saber-toothed cats, massive mammoths and sharks as large as a Greyhound bus."

"Our elephants today could pass under a mammoth's stomach," said Seina Searle, 38.

Actually, Florida has more large fossils than any Eastern state, experts say. Florida's sandy geology, pocked by sinkholes, increased the likelihood that an animal's corpse might become covered and preserved by silt before the elements destroyed it.

This was relatively unappreciated around Tampa Bay until 1983, when fossil hunter Frank Garcia found a mother lode that a shell excavator had uncovered near Ruskin. Within months, 170 volunteers and paleontologists from around the world descended on the Leisey Shell Pit, excavating some 30,000 fossils. It became one of the world's largest deposits of early Ice Age bones, accounting for 200 species, 20 of which were new to science.

"The club got a real kick in the butt from the Leisey Shell Pit," said member Paul Lien, who has been hunting fossils for more than 40 years.

Today, the club has 500 members, a popular newsletter and Saturday night meetings with educational speakers.

The Searles hold the group together, Lien said.

They met in 1987 at the Tampa post office, where both worked. Michael had had a latent interest in fossils for years, after seeing a shoebox full of shark teeth at a friend's home. As a couple, they prowled the beaches of Venice, Fla., for their own.

Then, in 1994, they attended FossilFest.

For the Searles, the attraction is being outdoors, with as many friends or as much solitude as you desire, while seeking an intimate connection to the ancient past.

When you discover a spear point, said Michael, 40, "The last guy that held it was the guy who made it."

Bill Coats can be reached at 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com

FossilFest will be held Saturday and Sunday at the Florida State Fairgrounds Special Events Center. Florida fossil hunters will display their finds, and vendors will sell fossils from around the world. Children can dig fossils in a sand pit and have their finds explained. Hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $4 for adults, free for children 12 and younger.

[Last modified March 10, 2005, 09:34:05]